Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday March 17, 2012 @02:54PM
from the also-wants-royalties-on-all-waffles dept.

New submitter BSAtHome writes "People with a healthy interest in fundamental freedoms and basic human rights have probably heard about SABAM, the Belgian collecting society for music royalties, which has become one of the global poster children for how outrageously out-of-touch-with-reality certain rightsholders groups appear to be. This morning, word got out in Belgian media that SABAM is spending time and resources to contact local libraries across the nation, warning them that they will start charging fees because the libraries engage volunteers to read books to kids. Volunteers. Who – again – read books to kids."

For example, if there is room in your bathroom for somebody else to stand, you would need to pay because you could possibly have a roommate standing there listening. And it's too much trouble to track whether or not somebody is there listening, it's just much easier copyright math to charge you assuming you are putting on a public performance.

I wish it weren't true, but sadly it is. This is why in the U.S. when you are given a "birthday cake" by a restaraunt, the waitresses cannot sing the standard "happy birthday" song and instead have to make up their own tune and their own lyrics, which don't invoke the same feelings that the standard song would have if they were allowed to sing it. This is an area of copyrights that I find invasive and counterproducitve.

Slight correction: The *tune* is actually past copyright. They can use the tune if they want. The words were written some time later, to fit the pre-existing tune, and remain copyrighted. So they could sing something else to the tune of happy birthday.
"Happy song-day to you,
We wrote this for you.
We'd sing you the real one,
But it's copyright too."

Unfortunately, now no one can sing that without violating your copyright. Oh, I see what you're trying to do. Get everyone to start singing your "Words" in place of the original, then, once everyone is used to singing it that way, you swoop in with your lawyers and begin collecting royalties. Sweet!

Step 1: Provide alternative lyrics for copyrighted Birthday song
Step 2: Tell people on Slashdot they should sing those lyrics instead
Step 3: Watch as the ever-so-influential Slashdotters spread the tradition far-and-wide in no time at all
Step 4: Lawyer Up
Step 5: Profit!

This occasionally happens when the customer brings their own celebration cake. Customers singing the standard "happy birthday" song in my experience is tolerated and nobody says anything about the song being "non-free" to sing with the standard lyrics. i.e. who gets to choose and sing the song and lyrics seems to go with who brings the cake.

These Belgian swine aren't legally permitted to charge children to BORROW these same books from the library and read them THEMSELVES, but they somehow have decided that they have the right to charge THE LIBRARY, if an adult reads them ALOUD to the same children?

Apparently it takes a Belgian lintellectual property awyer to dumb down a village...

These Belgian swine aren't legally permitted to charge children to BORROW these same books from the library and read them THEMSELVES

I don't know about Belgium, but in many European countries libraries pay an annual fee to copyright holders to partly compensate them for perceived lost sales. Also, some European cities don't have the concept of free public libraries, and some kind of annual membership fee is required. Thus, even if the children aren't paying anything, their parents are.

By the way, on Slashdot you can use the bold and italic HTML tags for the sake of emphasis, not need to write in caps which looks like SHOUTING.

I like to use the *old* for emphesis. Not because it's any better, but because it's a throwback to a time when we didn't need any of these fancy typesetting things to convey tone. ASCII was good enough then, and (with the addition of a bit of unicode for non-english text and math) it's good enough now.

I couldn't agree with you/more/. ASCII typesetting is a *beautiful* thing, with several major advantages:

- It's easy to read- It requires _fewer_ characters to be entered than HTML typesetting* You can easily come up with new typesetting styles on-the-fly and their meaning is usually obvious...o ***Tradition, tradition***.

^ I wish more posters would return to the good old days for these reasons.

Well, if there is an audience, yes. And it is about time they started making these freeloading children pay their fair share for entertainment. The librarians can always pay for the royalties by simply speaking a commercial every chapter. That way kids can learn about other important thinks like Coke, and the new Barbie./sarcasm

Psst. I heard this rumor that volunteers nurturing an enthusiasm for books in youngsters is what we call "free advertising" and "preserving the future of your market".

I'd bet you a considerable sum of money that whatever you'll manage to wring out of volunteer reading groups at public libraries won't amount to 2/5ths fuck-all compared to the amount you'll lose because the larval Belgians are going to be growing up with fewer books and more of whatever other entertainment is available.

There are times when being evil pays good money. This. Isn't. One. Of. Them. Dumbass.

This is *NOT* about the interests of the publishers. This is ALL about the interests of the lawyers who seek to benefit by suiing everyone they possibly can. That they are harming their "clients" business in the long term does not bother them in the slightest.

The **AA and all of them are a bunch of lawyers with their own interests at heart. Sure, their clients 'allow' it to happen, but most of the time, they act quite autonomously and independently of their clients as can be shown by the numerous times these groups have sued over materials they don't hold the rights to.

It did. The story is about a week old. After it broke SABAM claimed that the library in question does pay about 250 EUR, but it isn't for reading books but for music played in the library. SABAM said that it does collect money for public readings of books but it's only 15 EUR and the book has to be in copyright and be written by one of their member. (Source, in dutch [demorgen.be].)

All of this is BS of course these people try to collect on EVERYTHING and as much as possible. They're regularly collecting money for artists that aren't affiliated with them and tend to go after "soft" targets that don't have resources to fight back. They're scum.

Librarians are hardly a "soft target", they are well organised on a local, national, and international level, and have been successfully fighting censoring goverments and greedy publishers ever since they first opened their doors.

I keep reading stories like that from the US but have never heard anything similar out of belgium. Not to say it's maybe not the case but if it is I haven't heard of it. As for SABAM, I meant they often put individuals or small organisations in their sights. Youth parties, individual DJ's, bars. People who don't have the resources to get into a drawn out legal battle (in either time or money.)

Its even stupider than that because (in addition to being wildly unsympathetic to just about any member of the public whose morality core hasn't been replaced by a board of directors) it appears to rest on the assumption that the demand for books is wholly inelastic and not at all governed by the production of new readers or competition from other sources of entertainment.

Sure, maybe sometime before the advent of radio it was a trivial competition between 'reading' and 'backbreaking domestic drudgery' for the home entertainment market; but that hasn't been true for a while...

Given that they're likely cooking their books to cover up bribery (RTA - all of it) I doubt they really care about seeming sympathetic. Bribe government officials to give them a club. Use club. Wash, rinse, repeat.

SABAM has a weight of legislation that gives it authority to do this. It is not doing this especially for the benefit of the creators of the works but because they are licensed to. They have no qualms taking a fee from gig's where the band plays all their own songs! The band, I can assure you never sees the royalty.

I understand that civil process takes a long time in Belgium. Not many people have the resources or patience to test them in a court of law. Hopefully idiotic activities like this report will con

Fascinating the greed that impacts simple people every day live and to to what use?

There is a communication on sabam's website to rectify the miscommunication that appeared in the media, they did not charge the library 250 euro, no it was only 239 euro's but for playing music in the library.

For a public reading they would collect 15 euro's per public reading if the work is protected and the rightsholder is represented by sabam.Do not and did not collect this fee.

the summary is correct. SABAM clearly states that they want 15 euros per public reading (if the work is "protected"). and the GP knows this, still he acts as if this is perfectly normal. And, in the message by SABAM, they make it pretty obvious that they intend to ask for these +/- 15 euros whenever they can.just check their webpage, in french or dutch, if you don't believe me (this incident is not mentioned on the english version).

SABAM (the group in question) said, in a response, that it was a misunderstanding [google.com] (translated, Dutch original [standaard.be]). They charge 15 euro per public reading, and they cannot distinguish between adults and children. They always have to charge (their words, not mine).

For those of you wondering where the misunderstanding is: they invented a nice strawman for that, by saying that the library wasn't yet slapped with a yearly fee of about 250 euro. Which is true, that hadn't happened yet. But, from the sound of it, SABAM has every intention to do so.

Thankfully, this hasn't gone unnoticed. SABAM is losing favour with politicians [google.com]. Hopefully this storm will go somewhere. Note that SABAM isn't the only rightsholder club in Belgium (there apparently is some competition! yay free market!), so dissolving them ought to be an option.

Maybe Belgian society is different and while I've been contrarian on IP rights here, this is unfuckingacceptable. Period. If they took that 15â cost, and then donated it back, maybe. If its due to some EU IP thing.

Otherwise SABAM should come out in public dressed up like a Tin tin villain.

It shouldn't matter. They ARE doing these things, they're just upset that they're not free to slap first and apologize later (if and only if they get caught by the public).

They come out looking like the worst kind of scum in public because they ACT like the worst kind of scum in public. If you have a go around kicking puppies and stealing candy from babies it's only natural that people will think that's what you're up to even when you happen not to be for once.

As a belgian I can only confirm that they are the most horrible kind of "rightsholder group" you can imagine. Some of their "royalties" include. An extra tax on every dataholder (empty CD's, hard drive's, memory cards, ipods, etc...), local bands have to pay a fee when they perform even when they only perform their own songs (because they are influenced by...), they collect fee's from doctors waiting rooms, pubs, private parties, buses, even on the work-floor when there is music playing,...

This is piracy, plain and simple. The publishers are losing millions, if not billions, because each kid now won't need to buy the book themselves. They need to multiply the cost of the book by the number of kids being read to, and add a half dozen zeroes to the end for good measure.

Copyrights are to be taken very seriously, folks! This mass, rampant piracy needs to come to a close immediately so these poor, kind, destitute authors can get what is due to them.

Each one of those pirated book readings is costing $150,000 per child who attends. That must add up to $8 billion dollars in lost revenue per year. I'm surprised that the Belgium economy can survive. I suggest that we burn all the books to stop this insanity.

I would love to hear Roald Dahl's opinion on this. I believe it would be particularly succinct given the nature of all his stories [recap: wicked adults torment innocent children in various ways]. Too bad he is dead...

Perhaps most people don't ACTUALLY believe in information ownership. Many are perfectly fine with the concept of a 'commercial copyright' where you must respect copyright when you engage in commerce, but very few believe that sharing with friends, volunteer or charity work in the public interest, and similar non-commercial pursuits should be included.

People are somewhat split on the large scale file sharing. It's non-commercial, but a bit beyond the bounds of sharing amongst friends. Even there, I suspect m

it's technically correct, but who thought that anyone would push the point. It's a public performance, the author may be entitled to royalties, library or park bench or TV, that doesn't matter in the eyes of copy-write

You know damn well if we were trying to set up a public library system in America today, it would never be allowed. Corporate power doesn't give a shit about the culture of a nation, only the bottom line.

Courts are there so that people do not resort to/other means/ for just ice.

Bullying libraries and others because you're not making enough (in your twisted world) short term money (hey guys, teaching kids to love books and reading means you have future customers) means you are a leech on society and you should be removed. Permanently.

They're excellent readers. Under every sign - no smoking, one way street, no dogs allowed - they can see the words "for everyone else" that I simply can't detect.

Why these people exist in this world ?

The estuary of the Scheldt is the ideal place to assemble a fleet to invade England.

England didn't want the Dutch, French, Austrians, Spanish or whatever passed for Germans at that time to have it.

Now, they'd have been happy to garrison it, for the benefit of its populace of course, just like they had for... well, most of the world actually. But there was one slight problem.

See, the Dutch, French, Austrians, Spanish and whatever passed for Germans at that time didn't want the English to have a beachhead on the mainland, because they'd misbehaved somewhat on more than one occasion when they still had Calais. Go back a bit further to when the limey buggers still had Aquitaine; they managed to start a war that went on so long they actually lost count of how many years it lasted and had to just bloody guess when it came to naming it.

Hence, the only solution to the impasse was to invent a fictional entity to put it in. Sort of like Washington DC.

A week ago, I went to watch a DVD on my computer (anime TV series, ~20 discs in set). MPClassic could not play it properly, and WMP said I did not have rights to view the disc. So I torrented the whole series and watched that.

So you downloaded several tens of gigabytes to avoid DRM on one product? VLC for Windows is only 20MB. Mplayer is about 35MB. Even a full-blown super-fat linux distro (which will never tell you you don't have rights to watch some media) is 3.5GB and most are less. You must have a lot of patience. I'm glad I'm not sharing a contended ADSL link with you.

Personally, I buy music direct from the musicians' websites or in person from the musician at a gig. I only buy games that specifically do not have DRM. I rec